• Olivia Palermo's imaginary career is on fire. The City star is reportedly leaving her "job" at DVF to "work" in the publicity department at Elle. So if you see anything in Elle that seems to have been ripped from another magazine, now you know who to blame. [P6]
• Jay-Z demanded a Maybach, champagne, "good quality" peanut butter and jelly, 12 shot glasses, and a pack of Marlboros—along with $750,000—before agreeing to perform at the University of Arizona last month. [SG, P6]
• Jesus Luz's dad says his son and Madonna "definitely" plan to tie the knot in a Kabbalah ceremony shortly. But Jesus won't have to bother signing a prenup since the marriage won't be legally binding. [NYDN]
• The good news for Amy Winehouse: She's reportedly no longer addicted to drugs. The bad: She's supposedly traded the drugs for booze. [OK!]
• Man of the people: Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein was spotted flying coach on a flight from New York to DC. [P6]

While Stylista failed to thrill viewers or indeed expose anything about real life at Elle—we'll see if Marie Claire's soon-to-debut effort in the same vein, Running in Heels, does any better—the show did make a minor celebrity out of the mag's fashion news director, pretend Ice Queen Anne Slowey. Anne, along with her new puppy, Edie (after Sedgwick, like Leigh Lezark's dachshund, or Beale?), shares her fashion week opinions with Elle.com, the most important one being the answer to that perennial dilemma: Should one wear a designer to his/her own show? "As a rule, no. Certainly, never a full look. Maybe a piece if it's not too obvious. But never change from one show to the next. That looks old-school and ridiculous, and you run the risk of looking like you work there." Advice to take to heart unless, of course, you actually want to give the impression that you work for a designer.

Did you know that Elle editor-in-chef Robbie Myers had a tiny part in Caddyshack when she was 18? It's true. ("The director, Harold Ramis, picked me out of the crowd. I had a very small role, but it was a huge hit at college parties," she says.) Were you aware that Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter appeared in Alfie? Or that Richie Rich made a cameo in Zoolander? Fashion Week Daily went digging for some little-known (and occasionally embarrassing) performances by members of the fashion/media elite. You can see the full collection by clicking on the photo above. [FWD]

• Jason Wu's Fashion Week show will be the second-hottest ticket in town right behind Marc Jacobs. [NYO]
• Isaac Mizrahi's debut collection for Liz Claiborne is now online and up for sale. [Fashionista]
• Not everyone is excited about Fashion Week moving to Lincoln Center. Like Anna Sui. [NYM]
• Anna Wintour is styling Adele for the Grammys. [NYM]
• Football player Stewart Bradley is interning at Elle. [Fashionista]
• Eric Wilson explains the difference between Hello Kitty and Barbie. [NYT]

The ongoing collapse of the American economy means middle-class college grads must behave like coddled aristocratic twits and secure internships through their parents' largesse.

The few dozen people who still read print magazines will have noticed that the January glossies are more anorexically skinny than ever before. Elle is no exception, so it's no wonder that the mag is determined to pin its fortunes on a medium that remains relevant: TV. But since Joe Zee and Anne Slowey's uninspired (and lightly-viewed) Stylista has officially failed to make up for Elle's loss of Project Runway, Hollywood powerhouse agency CAA has just been tasked with finding new shows for Elle. So if you've got a concept that's brilliantly novel but still involves the humiliation of striving wannabes, elimination rounds featuring dramatic pauses/clunky music, and plenty of tears and tantrums, you now know where to pitch.

What would happen if you threw the world's worst people into a room together and then, right before locking the door behind you, you said "oh, and only one of you is going to make it out alive"? I reckon you might get something like the madness and desperation of Stylista, The CW's swishy competition series about a group of nincompoops competing for a non-job at Elle magazine. Last night was the fourth episode, and it stunk. As usual. But I watched it, as usual. Carry on with me after the jump for a grim detailing of the proceedings. Grumble-chinned Megan, still the World's Worstest Person, continued her campaign of bitchery and double speak. She, at 22 years old, called out the little 19 -year-old pixie from NYU for being too young to be in the competition. Which is silly because grumble-chinned "boutique owner" 22-year-olds don't really know anything more than cute and perky editors of their large New York City university's fashion magazine. But Megan was grumble-chinned in her grumble-chinned convictions, so she grumble-chinned her way past logic and into the fallow fields of unabashed grumble-chinnedness. Kate, who hasn't been the same since the helium accident, wept and moaned and tried to keep up with the big kids by saying nasty things in return when they said nasty things to her, but it just didn't work. Tis pity, really, because some grumble-chinned people who will go unnamed really need to be taken down a peg or eight. Other people yelled too, including Fatsy, Gay Black Guy, and Gay Fake British Guy (that is TOTALLY a fake accent, he's probably from fucking Maryland). Basically half of this episode was people yelling at each other, trying to debunk each others' qualifications. Which is just sad! There, there guys. Stop the fightin' and the bickerin'. None of you are qualified. There were, as always, two challenges: the first was to throw some clothes in a sack for Elle fashion director Anne Slowey's jaunt to the Hamptons. She met them in the middle of the cobble-stoned street in the Meatpacking District, and sifted through the items awkwardly. I'm betting you that if you press a button behind her ear or something, her front will open up to reveal a little alien creature desperately pulling at levers, trying to manipulate this unwieldy human machine. She's the most graceless woman in fashion, after Michael Kors. No, scratch that. Miss Kors is more graceful than this old windup toy. Anyway, little NYU nymph was declared the winner of the Fashion In A Sack challenge, and some shall-not-be-named people were expectedly grumble-chinned about it, saying bitchy passive aggressive things to the camera. Sigh. Nancy NYU picked the teams for the big challenge, and stuck Megan and Kate together, along with Ashlie the Yelling Black Girl and Danielle the Token Fat Girl. What a miserable team! Of course they would win! The task was to take a Tory Burch (I don't care if that's not spelled right) outfit and do a photoshootz forz itz! Team Grumble-Chin decided to go "retro" because Kate found an old TV whose shininess attracted her. That explains why on long drives, she'll sometimes just pull the car over and wander into an empty field, toward a piece of metal glinting in the sun. It was a sort of "bored 60's, 70's housewife" vibe (or whatever) though Megan tried to argue that "retro was the late 1960's, no the 1970's." She said it with such authority, that it almost impossibly sounded even dumber! American Girls: Grumble-Chin Learns A Lesson time. Retro is a general adjective (or sorts), not a specific time period. Stop being dumb. Team NYU Bobcats decided to get some mannequins and make their model sad to be at a party. Dyson the Vacuum Cleaner decided that the theme should be Gossip Girl. This was later hailed as brilliant ("the idea just suddenly came to me") by all involved, which is true. Because some homo thinking about Gossip Girl while working on fashions in 2008 New York City is almost as fantastic and beautiful a synaptic leap of inspiration as sitting on the toilet and coming up with the idea "bad smell." Well done Dyson. Well it wasn't enough anyway, because they lost and Team Miserable got the grumble-chinned win. Megan remains to grumble-chin another day, and that makes me sad and mad and oh! Kate's still hangin' on too. They're like the Abbot & Costello of some hellish torture world. So, they're the Abbot & Costello of Pawtucket, Rhode Island. Then the Anne Slowey axe fell: My First NYU Doll went home which was too bad because I wanted her to prove grumble-chin wrong. At least she didn't have far to go. The Post-Reality Show Loss R Train Ride Of Shame. Also sent home (two people!) was Gay Fake British fellow _______. I don't remember his name. Whatever. He was sort of cute in a really stupid fake British way, and I felt bad for him. But he seemed of good cheer when he left. I would have been too. I mean, Indiana Jones and Marion were happy to be the fuck out of that pit of snakes in Raiders, weren't they? Those sun-starved little Injun kids were thrilled as punch to be hot footing it out of Mola Ram's torture cave in Temple of Doom, yeah? And everyone in the audience was breathlessly happy to be fleeing Crystal Skull, for sure. Gay Fake British must have had similar feelings, as he clicked his heels, opened his umbrella and promptly got hit by a crosstown bus. Sad story. So that's that. The show soldiers on and somewhere right now they're oiling Anne Slowey's stiffening metallic joints and grumble-chin's grumble-chin is chinnily grumbling while the same indifferent sun beats down mercilessly on all of us. Isn't Fashion fabulous?

On last night's episode of Stylista, the contestants were divided into teams and tasked with devising a "shopping" page, one of those cheap-to-create catalogue-ish pages that highlight an alleged trend. When the hour of judgment rolled around, one team got roundly scolded by Joe Zee and Anne Slowey for not bothering to include store details and prices because, Anne frowned, what on earth is the point of looking at something if she cannot instantly totter off to purchase it? Elle would never feature clothes that aren't actually available to anyone, right? Um, not exactly, as the Times' Eric Wilson discovers during an intrepid investigation into what those three tantalizing little words, "price upon request," actually mean.

People tend to write off the Times Thursday Style section as frivolous and surreal. But today it exposed an unjust annoyance inflicted mercilessly on the entitled rich: fashion magazines showing clothing with prices available "upon request," when in fact that very clothing cannot be purchased at all, because it doesn't exist as a product! Vogue, for example, strongly implied one could buy a Roberto Cavalli goat-fur coat with a bit of shopping, but that was terrible lie. The Times' investigative journalism:

Stylista debuts tonight, and all the mildly-enthusiastic reviews reveal something more important than whether or not the show is actually worth watching: Apparently, we live in a world so ironic, where the line between reality and fiction has been trampled on to such an extent, that we can't even watch a woman pretend to do her job and dole out abuse to eager victims on a set created to resemble an office without suspending our disbelief for one second. Stylista's star, Elle's fashion news director Anne Slowey, is playing a part, you see, and although she's playing it quite well, that won't stop everyone from pointing out that she's doing Meryl Streep doing Anna Wintour:

In its review of Elle-focused reality show Stylista, the Times finds plenty to like, surprisingly. It seems hippie editor Anne Slowey does a surprisingly convincing impersonation of Meryl Streep imitating Miranda Priestly standing in for mean old Anna Wintour of Vogue. (So much for those embarrassing preview clips from a few months ago.) The catfighting is inspired and "novel." And yet that's not what will hook you on the show. You'll watch because you are aching to pretend, for an hour each Wednesday, that the brutal hierarchy of yesteryear lent work an elegant simplicity. Writes the Times' Gina Bellafante:

"Sessums, originally hired to write this month's J.Lo cover story for Elle, was pulled from the assignment after his first interview 'got much too personal' and the magazine put another writer, Peter Rubin, on the profile at the request of Lopez's reps." [Post, Previously]

In July, Aliona Doletskaya looked like just one in a series of baby Vogue editors who might someday replace Anna Wintour atop the American flagship. Then came a buzzy appearance at New York Fashion Week, a writeup in the Times, a Forbes takedown on Wintour, and, now, an embarrassing Wintour loss to Elle. Hachette's fashion title, a longtime also-ran to Vogue, surpassed its rival in October ad pages, Page Six reports. Wintour boss Si Newhouse is supposedly pissed. And Doletskaya was reportedly introduced at a Condé Nast magazine confab in Moscow as "the next editor of American Vogue" — a bit of tongue-in-cheek flattery that now threatens to become a self-fulfilling prophesy. Attached, excerpts from a May Russia Today profile of the telegenic Doletskaya. Click the video icon to watch.

Not that fashion magazine jobs have traditionally attracted shy, retiring types but if you're going to work at a glossy, you should probably bear in mind that it means signing up to be on TV. Since Elle's massively successful collaboration with Project Runway—which saw both circulation and ad sales leap—other publications are viewing TV-tie-ins as integral to future success, reports AdAge. As well as Elle's new show Stylista, next March will bring Running In Heels, a show about the "inner workings" of Marie Claire featuring Nina Garcia. As long they uphold the high standard of no-holds-barred realism set by Whitney and Lauren in the Teen Vogue closet, they're sure to have a hit.

Project Runway is helping Elle fare the media recession far better than fashion-mag-competitor Vogue. Elle's all-important September issue has 7 percent more ads than last year compared with a 7 percent decline at Vogue. And as shown in the Ad Age graphic at left, Vogue's ad-page lead slipped January through September. And there are other reasons Anna Wintour should be pissed at herself for passing on the chance to tie Vogue into Runway:

I get the sense Joanna Coles is one of those people whose unbridled enthusiasm for everything lends her a dorky quality that make her gargantuan ambitions somehow endearing. Since she took the editor-in-chief spot at Marie Claire two years ago, the magazine's newsstand sales have plunged nearly 30%, but you get the feeling she doesn't let it get her down! And anyway, people are paying attention to Joanna this Fashion Week because she just hired Project Runway judge Nina Garcia away from Elle. Fashion people sometimes say bitchy things about Joanna, mostly "that Joanna Coles is a nerdy poser who has to pay Nina to sit next to her at fashion shows," because fashion people are ridiculous and so is Joanna, a little bit. Just today Fashion Week Daily ran a huge long interview with her along with a little gossip item that seemed harmless but was actually sort of cruel! Read that and our Coles FAQ — and just for kicks, see a pic of Nina Garcia in a realllly short skirt — after the jump.

Well if it isn't a blessing from the Gawker Media Gods who brought us that pretty fundamentalist rape victim hating Alaska Governess! The Style Network plans to double your viewing rations of Project Runway judge Nina Garcia! This was known already, actually, but now there are details: the show is called Running in Heels and revolves around the staff of Marie Claire magazine, Elle having fired Garcia after deciding to make a reality show featuring Garcia rival Anne Slowey. Nina vs. Anne! Elle vs. Marie Claire! It is like Road Rules vs. The Real World, only…something we'll actually set our DVRs for! But can the show be anywhere near as awesome as the reality-TV-esque circumstances that enabled it to be?Nina told me1 last month she'd had plenty of offers to do other shows before, but didn't want to do a makeover show. She hasn't: According to Marie Claire, Running In Heels intends to "offer unprecedented behind-the-scenes access to Marie Claire and the stylish, smart women who put the magazine together each month," including "private video confessionals," in which "viewers will learn how the interns cope with their jobs, their superiors and each other." That sounds so good!!! Except, of course, for two things: 1. Seriously, it's Marie Claire.2 How bad could the bullshit be at Marie Claire? The show runs the risk of being as boring as Vogue's stupid three million dollar "documentary" web show no one except Tatiana watches. At least Elle's Stylista has the virtue of being watchable, at minimum, as a trainwreck. 2. It's going to be on the Style Network. Which is owned by Comcast, unlike new Project Runway host Lifetime, which is half-owned by Marie Claire publisher Hearst. What kind of entertainment conglomerate snatches up Nina Garcia only to not air her new foray into "docu"-reality TV? Something is off there. My guess is that Nina, who is pretty controlling of her image, did not want to make a campy gossipy addictive voyeuristic Devil Wears Prada-type reality show when she is already, you know, famous.

After foolishly losing hold of megastar editor and Project Runway judge Nina Garcia, Elle has been scrambling to recreate its TV buzz with a reality fashion show called Stylista, in which contestants vie to become a fashion editor. The presumptive star of this effort, Anne Slowey, starts with several strikes against her. She did an unconvincing Miranda Priestly imitation in an embarrassing trailer for Stylista; looked like the loopy hippie to Garcia's polished fashion plate in a New York magazine profile and some Web videos; and came up through the ghettoized editorial side of Elle rather than the fashion side. Enter Sunday's Page Six Magazine profile of Elle creative director Joe Zee, "the celeb whisperer" who, face it, is poised to be Elle's real breakout TV star, Slowey be damned. There are any number of reasons, but you can start with the fact that Zee got Scarlett Johansson and Keira Knightley to pose naked together in Vanity Fair:

Is fashion too gay? I know, I know, that is like asking, "do Americans love Jesus too much?" Like, maybe they do, but in general neither side is attempting to carbomb the other into submission and that is why Toqueville loved it here! But speaking of French transplants: many in the publishing world believe that Elle, America's second-biggest (and first-best) fashion magazine, has gotten "too gay" under great helmsman Joe Zee, who succeeded longtime "director" Gilles Bensimon, a lecherous Euro modelizer (who once was married to 'Elle' Macpherson!). Gilles was pushed out of the magazine in a protracted power struggle with Editor-in-chief Robbie Myers* that famously culminated in the firing of style director (and least gay person on Project Runway) Nina Garcia, and in came Joe at the beginning of last year. Gilles, who basically defined the magazine's look after 22 years in the job, liked to celebrate the "Essence of Woman"; Joe, a refugee from the male shopping rag Vitals, is more of an "Essence of Faghag" type. Opening arguments after the jump!Here, boiled down, are the arguments pro and con, which I gleaned in the process of chronicling the Anne Slowey-Nina Garcia Project Runway Stylista saga a couple weeks ago. As a non-consumer of fashion, I don't have a very strong personal opinion on the matter, but I bet I know someone who does! (Ha ha ha, well, my boss duh.) JOE ZEE'S ELLE = TOO GAY. Joe Zee is too gay. He is so gay he immediately brought in his gay boyfriend to work as the web editor. He thinks everyone should dress like Mary-Kate Olsen and he only likes gay celebrities like Mariah and Lindsay, except he is probably over Linds now that she is actually really gay. Everyone who loves him and thinks he is so nice is just fooled by the fact that he is a gay man and everyone knows gay men act nicer than straight men but deep down they are STILL MEN. Also he has ADD and is a self-promoter. When Gilles and Nina and their crew were running things, the magazine was classier and not so trendy and the halls were filled with the sounds of cool accents screaming at one another. Now everyone screams in American. Gilles' style was more timeless and feminine and less consumerporny and that's how it differentiated itself from Vogue. And seriously, why do you think Gilles is Tyra's favorite photographer? JOE ZEE'S ELLE = JUST GAY ENOUGH Whatevs! You are in America now, and in America people who like fashion (Marc! Tom! Christian Siriano!) are GAY. Like is it just through some bizarre series of unrelated circumstances that Elle resurrected its whole business thanks to its appearance on the gayest show on the gay network? And where do you expect all those mediagays to work, anyway? Men's magazines???? Hahahahahahahaha sorry, but the Fashion Week galas are just slightly better in women's! Oh, and Joe's boyfriend can actually code HTML, which is just a little more than slightly more qualified than we might say for that ex-wife Gilles made "editor in chief" of Elle Accessories! In any case, the rising generation of fashion consumers is a bunch of Fashion Spot-posting Project Runway marathoning MK-idolizing Santogold-muxtaping Andy Sachs wannabes with just the sort of warped priorities that sell fashion magazines, and you know what? When that generation invariably arrives in New York to waste its twenties buying boots and learning the hard way that there is no such thing as a free bump, it is going to need some real friends and guess what THOSE FRIENDS ARE ALL GAY. Okay everybody, recess! We'll follow up with some exhibits from both sides once we're reunited with our scanners.

• Addiction sells: now in its fifth season, Intervention is A&E's highest rated show. [NYT]